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Choose Your Own Hotel Adventure

To attract return business and extend stays, luxury hotels and resorts are increasingly offering exclusive "experiences" for guests. WSJ's Andrea Petersen joins Lunch Break with a look at which experiences are attracting guests and which have been bombs. Photo: Starwood Hotels & Resorts.

Guests at the Rome Cavalieri luxury hotel who spring for the "Roman Holiday Fantasy," get a professional makeup session, followed by a Vespa tour of the locales featured in the 1953 Audrey Hepburn movie and a driver who doubles as the camera-toting paparazzo.

The package is one of many over-the-top "experiences" hotels are offering that go beyond the typical tennis lesson or cooking class. It isn't enough, hotel executives say, to have a fabulous spa, great restaurant and sumptuous rooms. To stay...